184 HEJAZ. 



change in London, but nearly ten times larger. It 

 has properl}' no external front, the walls being con- 

 nected on the outside with the adjoining houses, 

 some of which have windows that look into the 

 interior. These tenements belonged originally to 

 the mosque, but tlie greater part of them are now 

 the property of individuals, who let out the different 

 apartments to the richer hajjis at very high prices. 

 The gates of the mosque are nineteen in number, 

 ^listributed without any order or symmetry. Most 

 of them have high pointed arches, though some are 

 round, or almost semicircular ; and as each gate 

 consists of two or three divisions, the whole num- 

 ber of these arches is thirty-nine. They are without 

 any ornament except the inscriptions on the exte- 

 rior, which commemorate the merits of the builder. 

 There being no doors, the mosque is open at all 

 hours, night and day. 



The great inner court of the Temple forms a 

 parallelogram or oblong of about 250 paces in length 

 and 200 in breadth. Ali Bey's measurement is 536 

 feet 9 inches by 356. The Avhole square is sur- 

 rounded by a colonnade or double piazza, the fronts 

 of the two longer sides presenting thirty-six and 

 the two shorter twenty-four arches, supported by 

 columns of different proportions, and amounting in 

 all to nearly 500. On the eastern side the row of 

 pillars is four deep, and three deep on the others ; 

 they are above twenty feet in height, and generally 

 from U to If feet in diameter. Some of them are 

 of white marble, granite, or porphyry ; but the 

 greater number consist of common stone from the 

 neighbouring mountains. No regular order of archi- 

 tecture is observed, and no two capitals or bases are 

 exactly alike. The former are of coarse Saracen 

 workmanship, while, from the ignorance of the 

 workmen, not a few of them have been placed 

 upside down. Some of the shafts in the weaker 



